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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

I SL A M
A N D WOM E N
The Oxford Handbook of

ISLAM
AND WOMEN
Edited by
ASMA AFSARUDDIN
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Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Afsaruddin, Asma, 1958– editor.
Title: The Oxford handbook of Islam and women /​Asma Afsaruddin.
Description: 1. | New York : Oxford University Press, 2023. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023017630 (print) | LCCN 2023017631 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190638771 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190638795 (epub) |
ISBN 9780190638801
Subjects: LCSH: Women in Islam. | Muslim women.
Classification: LCC BP173.4.O945 2023 (print) | LCC BP173.4 (ebook) |
DDC 297.082—​dc23/​eng/​20230508
LC record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​202​3017​630
LC ebook record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​202​3017​631

DOI: 10.1093/​oxfordhb/9780190638771.001.0001

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

 Contents

Acknowledgments  ix
List of Contributors  xi

A . DE C I P H E R I N G M U SL I M WOM E N ’ S L I V E S :
R E L IG ION , AG E N C Y, A N D DI V E R SI T Y
Asma Afsaruddin

B. F O U N DAT IONA L T E X T S A N D T H E I R
I N T E R P R E TAT ION S
1. The Qur’ān and Woman  21
Hibba Abugideiri
2. Classical Exegeses on Key Qur’ānic Verses Concerning Women  39
Hadia Mubarak
3. Women in the Ḥadīth Literature  61
Feryal Salem
4. Modern Rereadings of the Qur’ān through a Gendered Lens  80
Asma Afsaruddin
5. Modern Rereadings of the Ḥadīth through a Gendered Lens  119
Khaled Abou El Fadl

C . WOM E N A N D I SL A M IC L AW
6. Marriage, Divorce, and Inheritance in Classical Islamic Law and
Premodern Practice  155
Mariam Sheibani
7. Status of Muslim Women in Modern Family and Personal Law  181
Sohaira Siddiqui
vi   CONTENTS

8. Women’s Rights and Duties in Classical Legal Texts: Modern

Rereadings  200
Natana J. DeLong-​Bas

D. DE C I P H E R I N G WOM E N ’ S L I V E S : WOM E N
I N H I STORY A N D T E X T S
9. Early Muslim Women as Moral Paragons in Classical Islamic
Literature: al-​Mubashsharāt bi-​l-​janna  223
Yasmin Amin
10. Women as Moral Exemplars in Twelver Shī‘īsm  245
Maria Dakake
11. Women as Transmitters of Knowledge  259
Asma Sayeed
12. Muslim Women and Devotional Life  275
Zahra Ayubi and Iman Abdoulkarim
13. Women as Littérateurs in the Premodern Period  289
Samer M. Ali
14. Women as Economic Actors in the Premodern Islamic World  304
Amira Sonbol

E . WOM E N ’ S L I V E D R E A L I T I E S A N D
T H E I R R E L IG IO U S A N D S O C IA L AC T I V I SM
I N T H E M ODE R N P E R IOD
15. Women in the Mosque: Contesting Public Space and Religious
Authority  323
Marion Katz
16. Negotiating Motherhood, Religion, and Modern Lived Realities  338
Margaret Aziza Pappano
17. Women as Modern Heads of State  354
Tamara Sonn
 CONTENTS   vii

18. Women’s Religious and Social Activism in Palestine, Lebanon,

and Syria  367
Elizabeth Brownson
19. Women’s Religious and Social Activism in Egypt and North Africa  380
Nermin Allam
20. Women’s Religious and Social Activism in Iran  397
Seema Golestaneh
21. Women’s Religious and Social Activism in Turkey  415
Chiara Maritato
22. Women’s Religious and Social Activism in South Asia  428
Elora Shehabuddin
23. Women’s Religious and Social Activism in Southeast Asia  444
Nelly van Doorn-​Harder
24. Muslim Women’s Religious and Social Activism in China  462
Maria Jaschok and Man Ke
25. Muslim Women’s Religious and Social Activism in South Africa  478
Nina Hoel
26. Muslim Women’s Religious and Social Activism in the United States  489
Juliane Hammer
27. Muslim Women’s Religious and Social Activism in Western Europe  503
Jeanette S. Jouili
28. Women’s Religious and Social Activism in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf
Countries  519
Alainna Liloia

F. M ODE R N NA R R AT I V E S OF T H E G E N DE R E D
SE L F : WOM E N W R I T I N G A B OU T WOM E N
29. Modern Representations of the Wives of the Prophet Muḥammad  537
Ruqayya Y. Khan
30. Modern and Contemporary Muslim Feminist Literature: An Overview  549
Miriam Cooke
viii   CONTENTS

G . I SL A M , WOM E N , A N D T H E G L OBA L
P U B L IC A R E NA
31. Women’s Sartorial Agency: The History and Politics of Veiling  571
Anna Piela
32. Muslim Women as a Cultural Trope: Global Discourses and the
Politics of Victimhood  590
Katherine Bullock

Index 609
 Acknowledgments

This work owes its existence to Theodore Calderara, Editor-​in-​Chief of History and
Religion, who approached me several years ago with the suggestion of editing a volume
on the topic of “Islam and Women” for Oxford University Press’s renowned Handbook
series. Although I could not assume the task right away, the suggestion planted in my
mind shortly blossomed into a conviction that this was a project that I would dearly like
to take on. My profound thanks, therefore, to Theodore for getting the ball rolling on
editing this volume and for his patient and skillful shepherding of this project from start
to finish.
I also recognize Paloma Escoveda, project editor at OUP, who efficiently took care of
the logistical details related to the final production of the volume.
Thanks are also due to the College Arts and Humanities Institute (CAHI) at Indiana
University which provided me with a grant to defray the expenses of index preparation.
And last but absolutely not least, I acknowledge my fellow collaborators on the
Handbook and their learned contributions, without which it simply would not exist.
The years between March 2020 and summer 2022 were particularly challenging as
a global pandemic shut down universities and colleges, along with other institutions,
altering the course of our lives in completely unexpected ways. Many of the contributors
were delayed in submitting their final chapters because their institution’s libraries had
closed down and essential services, like interlibrary loan, were not available. Some of
them struggled to find childcare while business was supposed to go on as usual; some
had to look after sick loved ones, and a few among them fell prey to COVID themselves.
Many of us scrambled to revise syllabi on the fly and master the art of holding online
classes and worse, hybrid classes, where we had to lecture in class and allow students to
Zoom in as well! For those of us who were a bit technologically challenged at the begin-
ning (as I certainly was), it was quite a learning curve.
But all rose superbly to the occasion and made the herculean effort to get us collec-
tively to the finish line. After unavoidable delays, here we are. So a very robust shout-​out
to the contributors to this volume, who persevered through a very challenging period
indeed with exemplary collegiality and patience.
Asma Afsaruddin
Bloomington, Indiana
 Contributors

Iman AbdoulKarim is a PhD candidate in the Departments of Religious Studies and

African American Studies at Yale University.
Khaled Abou El Fadl is Distinguished Professor of Law and Omar and Azmeralda Alfi
Chair in Islamic Law at the UCLA School of Law.
Hibba Abugideiri is Associate Professor of History in the Department of History at
Villanova University.
Asma Afsaruddin is Class of 1950 Herman B Wells Endowed Professor and Professor of
Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Samer M. Ali is Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature in the
Departments of Middle East Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of
Michigan.
Nermin Allam is Associate Professor of Politics at Rutgers University, Newark.
Yasmin Amin is the Representative of the Orient-​Institut Beirut (Max-​Weber-​Stiftung)
in Cairo, Egypt.
Zahra Ayubi is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Religion at
Dartmouth College.
Elizabeth Brownson is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-​
Parkside, Kenosha.
Katherine Bullock teaches Islamic Politics in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Toronto, Mississauga.
miriam cooke is Braxton Craven Distinguished Professor Emerita of Arab Cultures in
the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University.
Maria Dakake is Associate Professor of Religion at George Mason University.
Natana J. DeLong-​Bas is Professor of the Practice in the Theology Department and
Islamic Civilization and Societies Program at Boston College.
Seema Golestaneh is Assistant Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at
Cornell University.
xii   Contributors

Juliane Hammer is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina,

Chapel Hill.
Nina Hoel is Associate Professor in Religion & Society in the Faculty of Theology,
University of Oslo, Norway and Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Contemporary
Islam, Department for the Study of Religions, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Maria Jaschok is a Senior Research Associate of the Contemporary China Studies
Program in the Oxford School of Global & Area Studies and a Life Fellow of The Global
China Academy, London.
Jeanette S. Jouili is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Syracuse
University, Syracuse, New York.
Marion Katz is Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.
Man Ke is Professor of Anthropology and Ethnology in the School of Ethnology and
Sociology at Northwest Minzu University, Lanzhou, China.
Ruqayya Y. Khan is Malas Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Religion,
School of Arts and Humanities, at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont,
California.
Alainna Liloia completed her PhD in Middle Eastern & North African Studies at the
University of Arizona in 2022, focusing on the role of Qatari women in nation-​building
and branding through the lens of transnational feminist theory.
Chiara Maritato is Post-​Doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Cultures,
Politics and Society at the University of Turin, Italy.
Hadia Mubarak is Assistant Professor of Religion at Queens University of Charlotte.
Margaret Aziza Pappano is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language
and Literature at Queen’s University, Canada.
Anna Piela is Visiting Scholar in the Department of Religious Studies at Northwestern
University.
Feryal Salem is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at American Islamic
College in Chicago.
Asma Sayeed is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Near
Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Elora Shehabuddin is Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Global Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley.
Mariam Sheibani is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Near
Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University.
Sohaira Siddiqui is Associate Professor of Theology at Georgetown University, Qatar.
 Contributors   xiii

Amira Sonbol is Professor of History at Georgetown University, Qatar and in the

College of Arts and Sciences at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
Tamara Sonn is Hamad bin Khalifa al-​Thani Professor Emerita in the History of Islam
in the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.
Nelly van Doorn-​Harder is Professor of Religious Studies at Wake Forest University,
North Carolina.
 A

DE C I P H E R I N G
M U SL I M WOM E N ’ S
LIVES
Religion, Agency, and Diversity

ASMA AFSARUDDIN

“Islam and Women” is a very broad topic and as complex as the lives of women
that it encompasses in a broad swath of the world. It is a topic that is of great in-
terest to variegated audiences—​to scholars of Islam and of Muslim societies, to
academics and intellectuals concerned with the premodern and modern Middle
East in general from different disciplinary backgrounds, legal specialists with a
focus on human rights, and also to a large “lay” audience of public intellectuals,
policymakers, “talking heads,” social justice and feminist activists, and opinion-​
makers of all sorts.
In recent times, the topic of Islam and women has become highly “ideologized”
in many spheres, acquiring a certain political valency that inevitably casts a
shadow as we approach this complex topic in the contemporary period. To engage
and countervail this contemporary “ideologization” which sometimes threatens
to derail level-​headed conversations on the topic, it is important to adopt a his-
torical, longue-​durée approach that provides appropriate contextualization for a
number of these contemporary debates. This is among the primary purposes of
this Handbook.
2   ASMA AFSARUDDIN

In its wide-​ranging coverage of issues subsumed under the umbrella topic of Islam
and women, this volume is purposefully multidisciplinary. Its various chapters are au-
thoritative contributions from well-​known scholars from the humanities and the so-
cial sciences, and who are at the cutting-​edge of scholarship on, inter alia, the topics of
Qurʾānic hermeneutics; ḥadīth analysis; Islamic law, especially as it pertains to women’s
legal and social rights; the scholarly and literary activities of Muslim women in the pre-
modern Islamic world, and their activism and lived realities in contemporary Muslim-​
majority societies. These chapters delineate a broad spectrum of views on these key
issues and the contestations of some of these views that are prevalent inside and outside
of academia. They provide sophisticated and often innovative analysis of textual sources
and of broad sociological and political trends within Muslim-​majority societies. Many
of these chapters emphasize above all the diversity present in Muslim women’s lives,
both in the premodern and modern periods, and pay close attention to the historical
and political contexts that shaped their lives and framed the thinking and actions of key
figures throughout Islamic history. Such an approach results in fine-​grained macro-​and
microstudies of Muslim women’s lives that problematize reified assumptions of gender
and agency in the context of Muslim-​majority societies, as is all too common.
Following this Introduction, the Handbook is divided into six sections: B.
Foundational Texts and Their Interpretations; C. Women and Islamic Law; D.
Deciphering Women’s Lives: Women in History and Texts; E. Women’s Lived Realities
and Their Religious and Social Activism in the Modern Period; F. Modern Narratives
of the Gendered Self: Women Writing about Women; and G. Islam, Women, and the
Global Public Arena. Under each of these rubrics experts weigh in on diverse topics
related to that particular theme, creating wide-​ranging narratives that attempt to do jus-
tice to complex, sometimes interrelated, issues.
In the first section, the lead chapter is written by Hibba Abugideiri, who foregrounds
“the question of woman” in the Qurʾān by focusing on three prominent female figures
within it: Mary, the mother of Jesus; Bilqīs, the queen of Sheba (who is otherwise not
named in the Qurʾān); and Zulaykha, the wife of ‘Azīz, the Egyptian pharaoh’s viceroy. In
her study of these women, Abugideiri adopts the “tawḥīdic approach,” which allows her
“to interpret the Qur’ān as Divine Discourse that must, by its own logic, reflect God’s Self
Disclosure, starting with tawḥīd (unicity).” This is an approach previously made famous
by two distinguished gender scholars, amina wadud and Asma Barlas, who are regarded
as pioneers in the field of modern Qur’ānic hermeneutics through a woman-​centered,
gender-​egalitarian lens. Abugideiri puts this approach to great use in her chapter.
Through this lens, she proceeds to offer us a penetrating analysis of the portrayals of
these women that allows her to arrive at highly significant and original conclusions
regarding the relation between the masculine and the feminine in the Qurʾān. Rather
than being characterized by duality, which implies exclusion and separation, she finds
that women and men in the Qurʾānic text are characterized by polarity, which implies
interconnectedness, reciprocity, and complementarity.
The tawḥīdic approach, furthermore, allows Abugideiri to stress not just God’s tran-
scendence but also his immanence so that one may thereby “authenticate female and
 Deciphering Muslim Women’s Lives    3

male subjectivities through God’s intimacy with humanity, women and men.” Applying
this tawḥīdic paradigm allows her to discern that in the Qurʾānic text woman and man
are ontological equals who synergistically point to the unicity of God and his larger
purpose for humankind. The moral lessons we derive from the lives of Mary, Bilqīs,
and Zulaykha parallel the lessons we extrapolate from the lives of Jesus, Solomon, and
Joseph, the male figures to whom their lives are linked respectively, so much so that
“their narratives can be deemed ‘un-​gendered’ examples of undifferentiated spiritu-
ality.” The emphasis on polarity rather than duality ultimately helps us view woman and
man in the Qur’ānic text as coeval agents in the staging of the human struggle on earth
in all its various aspects, concludes Abugideiri.
Hadia Mubarak contributes the second chapter in this section, which focuses on
influential commentaries written by some of the most prominent premodern male
exegetes on key verses in the Qurʾān that are frequently cited in the context of women’s
and gender issues. These verses are Qurʾān 4:1; 2:228; 4:34; and 4:128. Mubarak’s rigorous
and nuanced analysis of a wide range of exegetical works allows her to exhume far from
monolithic views recorded in these sources in the premodern period. Her survey of
these influential commentaries leads her to conclude that works of tafsīr (exegesis) are
characterized far more by polysemy and diverse approaches than is usually conceded
in modern studies of this important genre. She remarks significantly, “this [hermeneu-
tical] tradition is not a hermetically sealed box nor are its contents fixed,” and there-
fore it remains “amenable to a multiplicity of readings.” Her careful, in-​depth analysis
leads her to conclude that it is not always productive to read exegetical works along a
sharp patriarchal-​egalitarian divide; one is often able to discern on the part of the pre-
modern male exegete a deep concern for the well-​being of women, a notion that was
inflected by the exigencies of their particular historical circumstances. It is, therefore,
important to keep in mind, Mubarak reminds, that the sociocultural and intellectual
milieu in which exegetes lived considerably impacted their hermeneutical maneuvers
and interpretive proclivities, allowing us to question the normativity of their exeget-
ical discourses and opening up space in the modern world today for alternative, “revi-
sionist” interpretations that similarly foreground the welfare of women, especially from
egalitarian and gender-​just perspectives.
After the Qurʾān, the ḥadīth—​statements attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad—​is
the most important source for recreating the lives and roles of the first generation of
Muslim women, the celebrated Ṣaḥabiyyāt or women Companions of the Prophet. In
­chapter 3, Feryal Salem insightfully discusses a number of significant ḥadīth that have
been and continue to be frequently cited to establish mimetic precedents for subse-
quent generations of Muslim women. A number of these ḥadīth also serve as “causes/​
occasions of revelation” for key Qurʾānic verses and therefore provide important con-
textualization for understanding their larger moral and normative implications. Salem
makes the significant observation that when women scholars engage these prophetic
reports they often extrapolate levels of meanings that were occluded from their male
counterparts. Life experiences, especially as shaped by gender, and the sociopolitical mi-
lieux of those who explicated ḥadīth in the premodern period heavily influenced their
4   ASMA AFSARUDDIN

perspectives—​pointing to how our own radically altered circumstances in the twenty-​

first century can shape our readings of the ḥadīth corpus and allow us to variously en-
dorse or question the lessons that our male predecessors derived from it. Furthermore,
she points out, a holistic engagement with the ḥadīth corpus, along with the Qurʾān,
allows Muslims to critically engage a number of reports with misogynistic content and
assess their reliability as well as their credibility.
It is to modern readings of sacred, foundational texts that we turn next. In my own
chapter that focuses on woman-​centered and feminist exegeses of the Qurʾān in the con-
temporary period, these divergences in reading strategies that ultimately lead to dra-
matically different interpretations of key verses become clearly apparent. The chapter
outlines the pioneering efforts of early Muslim women exegetes of the twentieth century
to read the Qurʾānic text on its own terms rather than engage it through the prism of
the rich commentarial tradition generated by learned male scholars through the gen-
erations. The results in some cases have been downright revolutionary. These gender
scholars—​some of whom self-​consciously identify as “feminist” while others do not—​
have very cogently questioned some of the interpretive strategies of premodern Qurʾān
commentators and the highly gendered, hierarchical understandings to which they
often led. Through their own careful, cross-​referential reading of the Qurʾānic text and
exploration of the semantic layers of key terms, such as qānitāt/​qānitūn, nushūz, daraja,
and faḍTl, modern women exegetes are able to mount a trenchant critique of androcen-
tric construals of the Qurʾān that continue to impact the lives of Muslim women to this
day. In the chapter, I also discuss some recent critiques of their position by a small co-
terie of gender scholars and assess their validity.
In ­chapter 5, Khaled Abou El Fadl focuses on modern rereadings of the ḥadīth litera-
ture and the sunna of the Prophet, which refer to his sayings and practices respectively,
as recorded by his closest Companions and transmitted by succeeding generations
of Muslims. As the author points out, the ḥadīth corpus documents certain events in
the earliest history of Islam that have been interpreted as empowering and liberating
for Muslim women. At the same time, he notes, a number of the reports recorded in
this corpus can also be understood to advocate patriarchal values and structures that
sanction male dominance over women. The chapter begins by exploring what Abou
El Fadl terms “tension reports” “that are alleged historical memories of the exercise of
women’s agency in a fashion that challenged or defied the institutions of patriarchy at
the time of the Prophet or his companions.” The tension arises when these reports are
contraposed to what Abou El Fadl describes as “misogynistic reports” that uphold patri-
archal institutions and mores. Their content has been critically analyzed and challenged
by several Muslim women scholars in the modern period.
The bulk of the chapter is then taken up by a rich and thoughtful account of the three
main interpretive or thematic stratagems that have been employed by Muslim women
scholars, who write in English, in their engagement with the ḥadīth literature and the
interpretation of various reports in the modern world. Abou El Fadl concludes that
although patriarchy is a trial (ibtilā’) and the content of certain reports remain prob-
lematic to this day, one cannot advocate the wholesale jettisoning of the ḥadīth corpus,
 Deciphering Muslim Women’s Lives    5

as some have proposed. Rather, he says, a more circumspect and credible approach
is to continue to regard the ḥadīth and sunna as “critical components of the Islamic
tradition,” and to recognize that “this tradition must continue to serve as the source
for dynamic and inventive solutions, even to deeply entrenched challenges such as
patriarchy.”
In the next section, “Women and Islamic Law,” Mariam Sheibani provides a broad
overview of how classical jurists (from the second/​eighth to twelfth/​eighteenth century)
conceived of the rights and duties of Muslim women, particularly in regard to marriage,
divorce, and inheritance rights, and especially within the four Sunnī madhāhib, with oc-
casional comparisons with Shi’i legal positions, particularly within the Imāmī or Ja‘farī
school. The chapter also explores the reasoning behind these legal pronouncements,
the sources that the jurists drew from, and the assumptions they made about women’s
agency and sexuality that informed such legal positions. The strength of the chapter
lies in its skillful highlighting, wherever relevant, of the diversity of views among the
classical jurists themselves on these key issues of marriage, divorce, and inheritance.
Sheibani stresses that there was always a complex and contested relationship between
the formal articulation of rights and obligations in legal manuals and moral and reli-
gious duties that were not enforceable by the courts. In reality, therefore, legal rulings
pertaining to women’s rights and obligations were always subjected to accommoda-
tion of realities on the ground and the negotiation of diverse local customs and social
practices which allowed for various inflections of legal norms to emerge in specific
settings. Specific case studies provided in this chapter helpfully illustrate this highly sig-
nificant point which allow us to question monochromatic representations of Islamic law
and its application throughout history.
In her meticulously researched chapter, Sohaira Siddiqui points out how Islamic
family law (IFL; al-​aḥwāl al-​shakhṢiyya) in the modern period is often used as a litmus
test for both modernization and Islamization. Starting in the period of European co-
lonial occupation, a general awareness that IFL was in need of reform took shape, es-
pecially as women’s status and roles began to be reconceptualized in Organization of
Islamic Conference (OIC) countries. The ideological tug-​of-​war that ensued created a
series of dichotomies—​traditional versus modern, religious versus secular, state versus
civil society, and tradition versus reform—​that continue to “frame legal and policy
debates on Islamic family law.” Siddiqui provides a rich historical backdrop to the phases
of codification of IFL that took place in a number of Muslim-​majority countries, starting
in 1917, when the Ottoman Law of Family Rights was passed. The variable factors that
determined the process of legislative reform were constituted by “the colonial legacy,
state politics, the relationship between the state and religion, and the dominant po-
litical actors on the scene.” Siddiqui provides a sweeping overview of these historical
developments and assesses the efficacy of the historical-​legal, anthropological, sociolog-
ical, and political approaches adopted by scholars to study IFL. Some of the challenges
inherent in effecting legislative reforms, especially in regard to the promotion of gender
equality, are brought into sharp relief in Siddiqui’s discussion of Malaysia and Morocco
as case studies.
6   ASMA AFSARUDDIN

In ­chapter 8, Natana J. Delong-​Bas traces the history and content of modern scholars’
engagement with classical Islamic law, adroitly guiding us through debates about its
origins and development through time in order to trace “how normative roles of women
and their accompanying rights and duties came about.” In her valuable review of rele-
vant literature, she contextualizes a number of these debates and critically interrogates
the terms “women,” “rights and duties,” and “classical legal literature,” pointing to the
imprecise nature of such terminologies and the plural ways they can be understood.
Issues of methodology also are paramount and leads her to ask, “To what degree do
the theoretical descriptions match actual legal practice and how best to understand
differences between the two?” Delong-​Bas advocates that both qualitative and quanti-
tative approaches to the classical legal literature be adopted. This would lead to a more
holistic approach to the study of classical Islamic law and “help to reassert the mutuality
that is supposed to be at the heart of the husband–​wife relationship, rather than the uni-
directionality implied in a hierarchical relationship of obedience.” At the same time, she
warns, reformers should not downplay the real problems inherent in highly patriarchal
formulations of classical legal precepts concerning women and the family that have led
to pronounced gender inequalities in Muslim-​majority societies.
The next section is titled “Deciphering Women’s Lives: Women in History and Texts.”
In this section, Yasmin Amin in ­chapter 9 focuses on biographical and prosopograph-
ical literature that records entries on the ten women Companions promised paradise by
Muḥammad on account of their moral excellences and exceptional accomplishments,
on a par with the ten male Companions who were similarly assured of paradise. Over
time, it is the names of these male Companions that have been given prominence and
that have predominated in the literature written about the first generation of Muslims,
so much so that most Muslims would be hard put to name these illustrious female
Companions. Through her foray into this rich literary genre, Amin retrieves the names
of these women and dwells on their individual accomplishments that brought them
this kind of prophetic recognition during their own lifetimes. At the same time, she
ponders what social-​political-​historical factors contributed to the eclipse of their names
and of the memory of their distinguished status when the opposite trend is clearly dis-
cernible in regard to their male counterparts. Modern, especially women, scholars,
are beginning to reverse this trend by exhuming the details of the lives of these prom-
inent women Companions and assessing the different ways in which the significance
of such details has been interpreted and reinterpreted by male biographers. After her
careful, diachronic examination of these various sources, Amin concludes that “such
reinterpretations and re-assessments have been used to justify a great variety of cul-
tural attitudes toward women and gendered norms of behavior,” a process that, in fact,
continues to our very day.
Maria Dakake’s chapter nicely complements that of Amin by focusing more narrowly
on two prominent women from the first century of Islam. They are Fāṭima, Muḥammad’s
daughter, one of the women promised Paradise and greatly revered by both the Sunnīs
and Shī’a; and Zaynab, the female protagonist of the battle of Karbalā’ fought in 61/​
680 between an Umayyad army and al-​Ḥusayn, the beloved grandson of the Prophet.
 Deciphering Muslim Women’s Lives    7

Both Fāṭima’s and Zaynab’s lives are assessed through pro-​‘Alid and pro-​Shī‘ī eyes,
allowing for the tragic suffering and heroic forbearance of these two iconic women to
be foregrounded above all other attributes. Dakake’s thoughtful reading of their lives as
depicted in Shī‘ī sources brings into sharp relief the different yet complementary ways in
which these women are valorized: Fāṭima, the long-​suffering daughter of Muḥammad
and mother of his famous grandsons, al-​Ḥasan and al-​Ḥusayn, often regarded as pas-
sive; and Zaynab, the stalwart and activist heroine who goads the menfolk into battle,
single-​handedly saves the life of the future Shī‘ī Imām, and fearlessly speaks truth to cor-
rupt power as represented by the Umayyad caliph Yazīd ibn Mu‘āwiya (d. 64/​683). Yet,
as Dakake, points out, they share a number of similar attributes. Through a judicious
sifting of the relevant sources, Fāṭima is clearly revealed to also be a fearless critic of in-
justice and unflinching in her championship of the rights of the ahl al-​bayt, the family of
the Prophet. Ultimately, Dakake observes, “as models of devotion, obedience, courage,
and conviction, they serve as virtuous examples, not only for Shīʿī women, but for all
Shīʿīs, regardless of gender.”
In ­chapter 11, Asma Sayeed focuses on the roles played by Muslim women in the
transmission of knowledge, particularly of ḥadīth, since the first century of Islam. She
traces the ebb and flow in women’s participation in ḥadīth transmission, linking them
to specific historical factors that impacted such trends and provides a useful review of
the scholarly literature on the topic to date. Modern scholarly interest in this topic has
only grown in recent times, since, as Sayeed reminds us, “women’s religious learning
is indelibly bound up with questions of their agency, authority, and empowerment.”
Although the focus has typically been on Sunnī women scholars, the terrain has re-
cently begun to change with more studies now emerging that discuss the contributions
of learned Shīʿī women from the Imāmī branch; however, similar studies of female edu-
cation within the Zaydī and Ismā‘īlī traditions are currently lacking. Sayeed concludes
her chapter by reflecting on the future of scholarship focused on women’s transmission
of learning and the directions it might assume. She suggests that “stronger interdisci-
plinary, transregional, and historical connections” be forged among scholars to do full
justice to this promising field of inquiry and that there be a conscious attempt to connect
modern Muslim women’s scholarship to that of the past.
In ­chapter 12, which discusses how Muslim women’s devotional lives tend to be
portrayed in scholarly studies, Zahra Ayubi and Iman Abdoulkarim observe that two
principal paradigms tend to be invoked: one posits women’s practices as alternatives to
those of men while the other focuses on the historical and contemporary recovery of
women’s religious learning and authority. Ayubi and Abdoulkarim proceed to interro-
gate both these paradigms and uncover the assumptions and tensions inherent in each of
them. A perennial tension apparent in both paradigms is between hierarchical and egal-
itarian conceptions of gendered relations and norms in Muslim-​majority societies that
continue to spark debate into the contemporary period. This tension becomes evident
in certain types of literature that focus on issues of women’s empowerment, especially
through the pursuit of devotional activities and the acquisition of religious knowledge,
that are sometimes subversive of men’s traditional authority and sometimes not.
8   ASMA AFSARUDDIN

In his highly illuminating and provocative chapter, Samer Ali resurrects the
contributions of Arab and Muslim women to Islamic literary production in the pre-
modern period, generously documented in collections of poetry (dīwān); verse
segments (qiṭ‘as), orations (khuṭabs), and stories (akhbār) that he analyzes. The sem-
inal contributions of these gifted women are, however, hardly known in the West and
have been obscured by Orientalist authors who approached the Islamic East through
the prism of European imperialism. Such an “approach sidelined evidence of phe-
nomena that defied preconceived categories and constrained a rigorous understanding
of women’s roles as littérateurs and agents in society,” says Ali. Using the broad category
of “speech” and the umbrella category of “women’s rhetoric,” Ali is able to cogently es-
tablish centuries of women’s literary imprint on genres, such as poetry, verse fragments,
oration, and stories. Women’s prominence in literature should not be considered sur-
prising, he says; women were valorized in pre-​Islamic poetry, for example, as the be-
loved subject of the male poet and women played robust, public roles during the early,
formative period of Islam, both during and after the time of the Prophet. Subsequent
generations of women, he says, “implicitly benefited from the legacy of autochthonous
feminist counter-​culture, and the record of these women’s deeds in sources attests to the
interests, even admiration, of later generations, including men.” Through cultural and
literary productions of various kinds and their mastery of rhetoric, women from dif-
ferent levels of society established their agency that contributed to their sense of dignity,
Ali notes, and even allowed them to assume positions of cultural leadership, sometimes
through the medium of the literary salon.
In ­chapter 14, Amira Sonbol focuses on the topic of Muslim women’s participa-
tion in the economies of their communities in the premodern period and unearths
a wealth, so to speak, of information regarding their contributions from primary
sources. The sources that she relied on for this research are multiple and varied:
records of financial transactions concerning trade, mortgage, and litigation of var-
ious kinds; documents of financial settlements during marriage and divorce; inher-
itance records; and records of charitable endowments and trusts (awqāf) established
by women. Sonbol’s survey of these documents reveals that some women were ec-
onomically very engaged and made critical contributions to their local economies
that were recognized as important and essential in their own time. Their economic
productivity enjoyed legitimacy because women along with men are given the right
to own property under Islamic law and “neither was forbidden from being financially
active, investing, holding or spending wealth inherited or earned.” In the life of the
community, Sonbol describes the socioeconomic relationship between male and fe-
male as “rhizomatic,” that is to say, “interconnected” horizontally characterized by
communality and mutual dependence. By citing real cases drawn from these myriad
documents, she brings to life the impressive range of economic activities Muslim
women engaged in, continuing a tradition that extends back to the early formative
period of Islam and to the pre-​Islamic period. Based on her valuable study, Sonbol
observes that the “diversity of financial transactions that women were involved in, as
registered in premodern courts, shows how integral women were to the economies
 Deciphering Muslim Women’s Lives    9

of their communities and families,” and notes that such economic participation was
even considered normative.
The following section is titled “Women’s Lived Realities and Their Religious and
Social Activism in the Modern Period,” In c­ hapter 15, Marion Katz provides a notable
intervention in academic debates about how to assess the significance of women’s
increased mosque participation in the modern period in terms of agency and access
to “public” space. Saba Mahmood’s highly influential work Politics of Piety: The Islamic
Revival and the Feminist Subject, published in 2005, in many ways set the terms for these
academic conversations. To a large extent, these conversations have been shaped by
Mahmood’s analysis of women’s mosque movements as largely counterhegemonic, es-
pecially in their efforts to expand women’s religious authority, despite the conservative
gender ideology to which many of these women subscribe. This leads Katz to fruitfully
interrogate the “public–​private dichotomy” and the traditional framing of the mosque
as “public space.” Her research leads her to conclude that “women’s use of mosque space
has not historically conformed to the model of “public” religious activity” and “that
women’s religious activities inside and outside of the mosque do not fit a simple public/​
private dichotomy.” This observation leads to further reflection on how the mosque in
the contemporary period is increasingly becoming a site for debates about citizenship
and reconceptualized as an arm of the state, all of which affect women’s access to the
mosque in different sociopolitical contexts.
Chapter 16 focuses on motherhood and mothering in modern Muslim-​majority
societies. As the author Margaret Aziza Pappano observes, these terms refer to a con-
stellation of “multiple meanings, social formations, and diversity of practices” that has
global and transhistorical resonance. While motherhood is ostensibly revered in prac-
tically every society, its importance is more often than not obscured within patriarchal
institutions and cultural mores, she says. Pappano notes that although the Qurʾān and
the ḥadīth exalt the status of mothers above that of fathers without implying that child-
bearing was the primary function of women, Islamic patriarchal societies, as they evolved
since the seventh century of the common era, came to depict motherhood as essential to a
woman’s identity and position in society. This tendency appears to have intensified in the
modern period. Pappano surveys certain modern Muslim-​majority countries and notes
that women in such societies are often marginalized and stigmatized if they do not bear
children. A complicating factor that arose in the modern period was that motherhood
and “motherwork” became implicated in issues of nationalism and mobilized as a tactic
of resistance to European colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the
more recent period, the role of Muslim mothers has become the object of sharp scrutiny
in the context of the rise of religiopolitical radicalism in many Muslim-​majority societies
and in the so-​called War on Terror launched by Western governments.
In her highly informative study of Muslim women heads-​of-​state in ­chapter 17, Tamara
Sonn identifies several such rulers, who, varyingly, cite their religious background and/​
or commitments as a source of political empowerment. They include Qudsia or Gohar
Begum, Sikander, Shah Jahan, Sultan Jahan Begum, all of Bhopal, India; Benazir Bhutto
of Pakistan; Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, Megawati Sukarnoputri of
10   ASMA AFSARUDDIN

Indonesia; Tansu Çiller of Turkey; and Sibel Siber of the Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Sonn discusses how these influential women leaders, when acceding to power, made
concerted efforts in their different milieux to improve the situation of women in ge-
neral. With the exception of Çiller, they referred to Islam as empowering them to work
for social and political justice, and especially in the postcolonial period, to work to es-
tablish democracy in their respective societies. Bhutto is notable in having left behind
publications in which she strongly asserts the congruence between foundational Islamic
principles and the establishment of democratic, civil societies that guarantee the rights
of women and of all citizens equally. Sonn concludes by observing that the women
heads-​of-​state she focused on, in general, did not regard their positions as anomalous;
rather they considered themselves as continuing the legacy of exercising multiple roles
of leadership as evident in the lives of the first generation of prominent Muslim women.
In the next chapter, Elizabeth Brownson provides a masterly survey of how women in
Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria derive empowerment and agency from their religious and
social activism in these specific milieux. She reminds us that social, economic, historical,
and political factors specific to a particular context must always be taken into consider-
ation when conducting a survey of this sort. This allows her to reveal the complexities
inherent in the lives of the women she studied in these three different locales and the
ways in which they do not map neatly onto preconceived notions of empowerment
and agency. For example, the Hamas women leaders Brownson studied in Palestine
proved to be quite effective in parlaying their political appointments into opportunities
for seeking better access to education and employment for all women, often using reli-
gious arguments to make their case. Their situation, Brownson argues, challenges the
assumptions of some enthocentric Western observers that women who wear the hijab
and practice gender segregation are automatically to be regarded as disenfranchised.
Careful attention to facts on the ground and nuances in details also allows Brownson
to revisit an assumed ready tension between Islamist and secular women activists.
Her research brings to light instead some common ground between these two groups
on key issues like work, education, and political participation, although different
conceptualizations of human rights continue to be a source of disagreement.
In ­chapter 19, Nermin Allam provides an account of women’s religious and social ac-
tivism in Egypt and, more broadly, North Africa, and makes the critical point that the
range of women’s activism in this region challenges an assumed bifurcation between
the secular and religious realms, on the one hand, and between the social and polit-
ical, on the other. This is to be expected, she affirms, since these women are from dif-
ferent socioeconomic backgrounds and have differential access to key resources and
positions of power. Moreover, whether such activism is fueled by Islamic volunteerism
or not, women’s public engagement challenges preconceived notions of agency and self-​
empowerment current in the West. Despite such complexities inherent in their lived
realities, Allam is nevertheless able to identify some common themes and patterns that
marked women’s social and religious activism, including the rise of a Qur’ān-​based
Islamic feminism, and shaped its trajectory specifically in Egypt, reflecting broader
trends in North Africa. These themes include the framing of women’s social and
 Deciphering Muslim Women’s Lives    11

religious activities, particularly in the early period; the frequent overlap in the intellec-
tual roots of secular and Islamic discourses; and a tendency toward what Islah Jad has
termed “NGO-​ization:” that is to say, the tendency to form nongovernmental organiza-
tions, whose track record over the years has at best been mixed.
Seema Golestaneh’s chapter on women’s activism in Iran since the nineteenth cen-
tury provides a vivid and detailed description of the different trajectories these modes
of activism have assumed over the years in changing sociopolitical circumstances. She
surveys the intellectual histories and ethnographies of Iranian women’s religious and
political engagements and rehearses some of the key debates in the field regarding the
origins and nature of such engagements. In the course of her extensive literature review,
she delves into writings generated by women activists themselves, retrieved from influ-
ential periodicals, such as Zanān and others, and surveys as well the secondary literature
that studies such activism. The policing of women’s apparel, as apparent in the various
unveiling/​veiling measures adopted under different governments, is explored to reveal
how women learn to navigate these sartorial restrictions. Golestan further questions
the efficacy of “unfortunate binaries, pitting ‘feminist’ against ‘Islamic fundamentalism’
or ‘Islamists’ against ‘secularists,’ ” noting that the scholarly trend now is “to document
the ways in which women, of varying personal pieties, have used religious discourses in
order to influence legislation and issues they view as favorable to women.” As a result,
religious and secular feminists have formed alliances to promote cooperation on shared
concerns and more effectively campaign for legislative reform, leading to what some
have called “the secularization of Islam.”
In ­chapter 21, Chiara Maritato explores the changes that have occurred in the last
three decades in women’s movements in Turkey, a key site for women’s activism in the
MENA region. Her study is based on ethnographic research that she conducted there
between 2013 and 2019, which focused on the Islamist women who were employed as
religious officers by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) after the repeal of the
headscarf ban by the AKP government. Maritato adopts a perspective “that considers
women’s religious activism beyond the feminism–​antifeminism dichotomy,” making it
possible to shed light on different forms of women’s agency. She discovered that while
most of the women employed by the Diyanet had been politically and religiously active
against previous governments, their activism became attenuated after attaining their
Diyanet positions, and they largely became transformed into compliant bureaucrats
under the AKP. More critical voices emanating from Muslim and secular feminists have
become marginalized since 2010 and has contributed to a more “religious-​conservative
gender climate,” in which the historic cooperation between these two groups has be-
come diluted.
Elora Shehabuddin’s chapter highlights the religious activism of women in Pakistan
and Bangladesh, two populous Muslim-​majority countries in South Asia. Shehabuddin
focuses on their membership in two important Islamic pietist organizations—​the
Tabligh-​i Jamaat (TJ) and the Jamaat-​i Islami (JI), which established a women’s wing
known as the Halq-​e Khawateen. Interestingly, as she notes, the TJ has eroded certain
markers of gendered behavioral differences between women and men by emphasizing
12   ASMA AFSARUDDIN

moral virtues, such as humility and modesty, equally for women and men. Both are
equally called to engage in proselytizing activity and both are expected to contribute
to domestic chores, like cooking, etc., raising alarm among some that young men are
being feminized. Like the TJ women, the JI women also participate in proselytization;
however, at the same time, they are guided by the vision of Abu al-​Ala Mawdudi, the
founder of the JI, that a woman’s primary realm of activity was her home. Nevertheless,
with rising rates of literacy and, especially for the JI, increased focus on gaining political
leverage, these religious women have also mobilized themselves on college and univer-
sity campuses and often run for political office and parliamentary seats. Despite these
tangible gains and the acquisition of skills in social activism and political organization,
Shehabuddin notes that these women have not inaugurated movements that can be
considered progressive and ultimately, they have “supported policies and laws that dis-
criminate against [other] women” who do not dress or observe the same practices as
they do.
In ­chapter 23, dealing with Muslim women’s activism in Southeast Asia, Nelly van
Doorn-​Harder focuses on Indonesia and Malaysia, two of the largest Muslim-​majority
countries today, which are the sites of robust women’s engagement with the key social
and political concerns of the day. Many of these women activists are avid participants
in religious discourses that contest classical interpretations of key Qurʾānic verses and
of relevant ḥadīth concerning women and the family that have been deployed to restrict
women’s rights. They frequently join NGO’s, like the women’s wings of the influential
Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama groups in Indonesia. There are also women-​
led NGOs, like Sisters in Islam, and its successor organization Musawah in Malaysia,
that have gained national and international recognition for their concerted efforts to
challenge discriminatory laws against women through scriptural hermeneutics. In a
Muslim-​minority context in the Philippines, Muslim women activists are similarly
campaigning for social and legal change, employing many of the same hermeneu-
tical tools and reformist rhetoric as their counterparts in Indonesia and Malaysia, and
establishing NGOs like the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy. In each of these
contexts, as Van Doorn-​Harder points out, “vibrant groups advocating for the rights of
Muslim women are creating new models and repertoires of Muslim feminism.”
It has long been known that there has been a proud tradition of female imams and
female-​led mosques in China for almost 300 years. Maria Jaschok’s and Man Ke’s well-​
researched and timely chapter reminds the reader of this proud tradition of Muslim
women’s contributions to Islam in China, especially among the Hui people. But they
rightly caution us that in order to retrieve instances of women’s empowerment, we
should focus on not only organized campaigns and movements geared toward this end
but also women’s quotidian activities that create new social opportunities and forms
of social interaction that “expand their presence in the public space.” Living as a reli-
gious minority in an often hostile sociopolitical milieu (the current dire predicament
of the Uighur Chinese readily come to mind), Chinese Muslim women’s access to the
public sphere and their potential activism are, as the authors remind us, “inscribed by
gender, culture, time, and place.” They express concern that in our desire to find overt
 Deciphering Muslim Women’s Lives    13

manifestations of religious and social activism in a perilous environment, we may

overlook activities that are more pragmatically geared toward existential well-​being
and communal solidarity. Such activities illustrate the importance of the concept of
bande among Muslim women, “which means taking responsibility for socializing,
constructing and maintaining interpersonal relationships,” that allow for “the first
building-​blocks of civil society” to be introduced into their world and thereby “foster
local and translocal social/​religious networks.” Ultimately, Jaschok and Ke remind us
that change does not always come through organized radical movements, but often
through individual and group activities that more modestly and incrementally create
greater access to public and social goods, especially in less than congenial, if not down-
right dangerous, circumstances that have to be carefully navigated.
In ­chapter 25, Nina Hoel describes Muslim women’s activism in South Africa as
constituting a “rich and composite terrain.” In covering this terrain, Hoel presents
three case studies that illustrate the nexus of “theoretical issues and strategies prev-
alent in the South African context.” ’ They are: women in the mosque; the struggle to
establish a Muslim personal law; and the negotiation of queerness in the Muslim con-
text, presenting examples from the activism of the organization The Inner Circle.
Experience, intersectionality, and the tafsīr of praxis, a phrase introduced by the South
African scholar Sa’diyya Shaikh, are three theoretical concepts that render Muslim
women’s activism in the South African context distinctive, observes Hoel. A careful
analysis of the South African landscape through these lens allows the author to reveal
the complex ways in which religion, law, the state, individuals, and organizational actors
interact with one another and contribute to the distinctiveness of South African Muslim
women’s activism.
In the next chapter, Juliane Hammer outlines four theoretical considerations that un-
dergird her survey of Muslim women’s activism in the United States: the relationship
between Islam and feminism; the effect of anti-​Muslim hostility on activism and the
scholarly literature on it; the relationship between practice and discourse; and the exten-
sion of the purview of women’s activism well beyond that of “women’s issues.” She applies
these considerations to her study of various movements, organizations, and individuals
that are prominent in the American Muslim community in order to allow for their
particularities embedded in their sociohistorical context to emerge and to reveal the
diversity of their approaches to a wide gamut of issues, such as grassroots community-​
building, women’s education, sexual violence, mosque participation, and racial and re-
ligious discrimination. At the same time, Hammer is able to identify broader patterns
of responses to the challenges Muslims face in the larger American society and the
networks of cooperation and solidarity that have developed among a number of these
organizations and individuals, both in national and international contexts.
In ­chapter 27, Jeannette Jouili discusses how Muslim women’s activism has evolved
in Europe since the second half of the twentieth century and examines four principal
kinds of such activism: (1) activism that focuses on empowering women within Muslim
communities and within the broader societies, (2) religious activism within Islamic
communities and institutions, (3) activism centered on religious minority rights and
14   ASMA AFSARUDDIN

gaining public recognition, and (4) activism on larger social and political issues. In
the course of pursuing such activisms, Muslim women face considerable challenges
both from within their own communities and from the larger, frequently hostile, non-​
Muslim society they inhabit. Given the variegated sociopolitical and economic contexts
in which they operate, their agendas and methods of negotiating specific challenges vary
quite a bit, especially in “response to the political discourses constructed about them in
their respective societies.” One activity common to these women is their constant battle
against the cultural and religious stereotypes of Muslims, and of Muslim women in par-
ticular, that are endemic in the larger society, reinforced by the “hegemonic structure of
the ‘liberal grammar’ within debates on European Islam”—​all of which prevent them
from enjoying the full benefits of citizenship.
Alainna Liloia is among a handful of specialists today who study women’s religious
and social activism in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region. In her chapter, she reveals how
standard stereotypes concerning the relationship between religion, secularism, and
women’s feminist consciousness are challenged by research like hers that probe the
complex relationship between these variables, as evident in the lives of Saudi and Gulf
women. Liloia particularly draws attention to the “intersection of political agendas, re-
ligious expectations, and social pressures [that] have impacted women in the Gulf and
shaped their subjectivities and identities in different ways.” As a consequence, women
express their agency in different ways through their level of engagement with the var-
ious educational, political, religious, and social institutions that impact their lives.
Specific state initiatives and agendas directly affect their attempts to achieve social
and political equality with men. Through her insightful analysis, Liloia reminds that
women’s activism can be gauged not only through their participation in public organ-
ized campaigns that focus, for example, on the right to drive in Saudi Arabia, but also
in the myriad ways they negotiate, challenge, and resist mundane social and political
norms that impact their daily lives.
Chapter 29 is the first of two chapters in the fifth section, titled “Modern Narratives
of the Gendered Self: Women Writing about Women.” In this chapter, Ruqayya Y. Khan
examines modern portrayals of the Wives of Muḥammad, particularly by women
authors, against the backdrop of Muslim reverence for “the Mothers of the Believers”
on the one hand, and Western polemics against Islam and its prophet, on the other. As
Khan explains, much of early Islamic history cannot be fully understood unless we study
the lives of the Prophet’s wives (Wives) as well, who, by virtue of who they were, were
witnesses to all the major events in Muḥammad’s life and became key transmitters of his
sayings (ḥadīth) that assumed normative status for subsequent generations of Muslims.
Studying the lives of the Wives as Wives (rather than as “Mothers of the Believers”)
also humanizes Muḥammad and allows for a more honest and critical appraisal of his
legacy to emerge, she says. Khan stresses the need to go beyond the traditional focus on
Khadīja and ‘Ā’isha, who are the best-​known among the Prophet’s wives, and pleads for
“a freshness in approaches and methods to the study and examination of the Wives,” in
order to dismantle “the tried and typical approaches.” She provides a helpful review of
primary sources and secondary scholarship on the topic and suggests that new studies
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open one into another, giving a fine perspective, and they lead,
through a dozen different doorways, on to a splendid, white-tiled
verandah which runs out to the bank of the Pásig River. There is a
picturesque, moss-covered river landing on the verandah below.
There are about twenty rooms on the one floor, all of them good
sized and some of them enormous, and it took a great many servants
to keep the place in order. The floors were all of beautiful hardwoods
and it required a permanent force of six muchachos to keep them in
a proper state of polish. The Filipino method of polishing floors is
interesting. Your muchacho ties either banana leaves or some sort of
bags on his bare feet, then he skates up and down, up and down,
until the floors get so slick that he himself can hardly stand up on
them. It is easy to imagine that six boys skating together in the
spaciousness of the Palace might cut fancy figures and have a
delightful time generally, if they thought they were unobserved.
Filipinos of the muchacho class always play like children, no matter
what they are doing, and they have to be treated like children.
The Palace furniture, which must have been very fine in Spanish
days, was of red narra, or Philippine mahogany, handsomely carved
and displaying on every piece the Spanish coat-of-arms. But during
the changing Spanish régimes some one with a bizarre taste had
covered all the beautiful wood with a heavy coat of black paint. The
effect was depressingly sombre to me.
The porcelain, however, or what was left of it, was unusually good.
The Spanish coat-of-arms in beautiful colours was reproduced on
each plate against a background of a dark blue canopy. I must say
there were quite as many reminders of Spanish authority as I could
wish for and I frequently felt that some noble Don might walk in at
any moment and catch me living in his house.
But, it didn’t take us long to get settled down in our new domain,
and I soon ceased to regret the sea breezes and the salt baths of
Malate. Malacañan enjoyed a clean sweep of air from the river and
our open verandah was in many ways an improvement on the
gaudily glazed one that we had gradually become accustomed to in
the other house. The Malacañan verandah, being much of it roofless,
was of little use in the daytime, but on clear evenings it was the most
delightful spot I have ever seen. I began to love the tropical nights
and to feel that I never before had known what nights can be like.
The stars were so large and hung so low that they looked almost like
raised silver figures on a dark blue field. And when the moon shone—
but why try to write about tropical moonlight? The wonderful
sunsets and the moonlit nights have tied more American hearts to
Manila and the Philippines than all the country’s other charms
combined. And they are both indescribable.

TWO VIEWS OF MALACAÑAN

PALACE. THE FIRST PICTURE SHOWS
THE WIDE, ROOFLESS VERANDA
OVER THE PASIG RIVER

When I lived in Malate and could look out across the open, white-
capped bay to far-away Mt. Meriveles, I sometimes forgot I was in
the Tropics. But at Malacañan when we gazed down on the low-
lapping Pásig, glinting in the starlight, and across the rice fields on
the other side where swaying lanterns twinkled from beneath the
outline of thatched roofs, there was little to remind us that we were
Americans or that we had ever felt any air less soothing than the soft
breeze which rustled the bamboo plumes along the bank.
Our household was in every way much enlarged on our change of
residence and circumstances. There were eight or nine muchachos in
the house, two extra Chinese helpers in the kitchen, and the staff of
coachmen and gardeners increased on even a larger scale. Our stable
of ponies multiplied to sixteen, and even then there were too few for
our various needs. It is difficult for the dweller in the Temperate
Zone to realise how small an amount of work the native of the
Tropics, either man or beast, is capable of.
We thought at first that the salary attached to the office of
Governor of the Philippines was quite splendid, but we soon gave up
any idea we might have had of saving a little of it for a rainy day. Our
rainy day was upon us. It rained official obligations which we had to
meet. The mere cost of lighting Malacañan was enough to keep a
modest family in comfort. I don’t know about conditions at the
Palace now, but I imagine they have not changed much, and I do
know that Manila is a more expensive place in which to live than it
was in my time. And yet there is serious talk of reducing the salary of
the Governor-General. It seems a pity. This would place the office in
a class with Ambassadorships which nobody but rich men can
accept. The present salary, with nice management and a not too
ambitious programme, will just about cover expenses, but I feel sorry
for the wife of the Governor who must try to do what is expected of
her on less.
My cook, who had been quite independent of me at Malate,
became at Malacañan wholly unapproachable. I don’t know why, but
so it was. He occupied quarters opening on one of the courts below
and connected with the dining-room by an outside staircase up
which I was never able to inveigle him. I had to deliver my orders
from the top of the stairs and when he had listened to just as much as
he cared to hear he would disappear through the kitchen door, and
no amount of calling would bring him back. As the kitchen was an
ante-chamber to a sort of Chinese catacombs, extending over a good
part of the basement, I never ventured to follow him and I had to
swallow my wrath as best I could.
 But he was a jewel despite his eccentricities. He could produce the
most elaborate and varied buffet suppers I ever saw and I never knew
a cook who could make such a wonderful variety of cakes and fruit
tarts and cream-puffs. He took a real delight in their construction,
and for two days before a reception he would spend all his time
filling every pan in the house with patisseries elaborately iced in
every imaginable colour.
I began at once to give an afternoon reception every week and if it
hadn’t been for my disagreeable, but capable, old Ah Sing I should
have been in a constant turmoil of engagements with caterers and
confectioners. As it was, I never had to give an order, really.
“Reception Wednesday, Ah Sing,” was all that was necessary, and
except for a glance now and then to see that the muchachos were
giving the floors and the furniture a little extra polish on Wednesday
morning, the only preparations I had to make for receiving two
thousand people were to put on an embroidered muslin gown and
compose myself.
These afternoon receptions were public, our only form of
invitation being an “At Home” notice in the newspapers, and
considering the unsettled state of Manila society in those days, it is
really remarkable that we had so few unwelcome guests. There were
a great many derelicts and generally disreputable people, both
American and European, trying to better their fortunes or add to the
excitement in our agitated community, but we suffered no
unpleasant consequences from our open hospitality, though every
Wednesday the Palace was thronged and every Wednesday many
new faces appeared. Army and Navy people, civilians of every
occupation and many foreigners—Germans and British mostly—
came nearly always. I remember especially the first instalment of
American school teachers. They were, for the most part, a fine lot of
men and women who had come out with high hopes and ideals and
an enthusiastic desire to pass them on. There were some pretty girls
among them and a number of very clever looking men. I believe they
used to enjoy my parties as much as anybody in Manila. They were
homesick, no doubt, especially the girls, and I suppose the sight of so
many friendly American faces cheered them up.
The Filipinos had to have a little coaxing before they began to avail
themselves very freely of our general invitation. But by asking many
of them personally and persistently to “be sure and come
Wednesday” we prevailed on a good number to believe they were
really wanted; and after a little while there began to be as many
brown faces as white among our guests.
Speaking of school teachers reminds me that it was just about this
time that our minds were relieved of all anxiety with regard to Bob’s
and Helen’s education. My husband had wanted to send our ten-
year-old son back across the Pacific and the United States, all by
himself, to his Uncle Horace’s school in Connecticut, and I had
opposed the idea with all my might without being able to offer a
satisfactory substitute plan. But now a school for American children
was opened and they were as well taught as they would have been at
home. Moreover, Bob and Helen found a large number of congenial
companions, and I don’t think I ever saw a happier set of boys and
girls. They lived out of doors and did everything that children usually
do, but their most conspicuous performance was on the Luneta in
the evenings, where they would race around the drive on their little
ponies, six abreast, or play games all over the grass plots which were
then, and always have been, maintained chiefly for the benefit of
children, both brown and white.
My husband’s change in title and station made very little
difference in the character of his duties, but it gave him increased
authority in the performance of them. The onerous necessity for
submitting legislation to an executive whose point of view was
different from that of the Commission came to an end, and he was
able to see that such laws as the Commission passed were put in
operation without delay. Under General Chaffee the feeling on the
part of the Army against the encroachments of civil government gave
way, slowly but surely, to an attitude of, at least, friendly toleration.
It was as if they said: “Well, let them alone; we know they are wrong;
but they must learn by experience, and, after all, they mean well.”
General Chaffee and General MacArthur were two quite different
types of men. General Chaffee was less precise, less analytical.
General MacArthur had always been given to regarding everything in
its “psychological” aspect and, indeed, “psychological” was a word so
frequently on his lips that it became widely popular. General Chaffee
was impetuous; he was much less formal than his predecessor both
in thought and manner, and Mr. Taft found co-operation with him
much less difficult. He made no secret of his conviction, which was
shared by most of the Army, that civil government was being
established prematurely, but he was not unreasonable about it.
He refused at first to listen to the proposition for the establishment
of a native Constabulary. This had been the Commission’s pet project
ever since they had been in the Islands, and it was a great
disappointment to them to find that the opposition which they had
encountered in the former administration was to be continued.
What they wanted was a force of several thousand Filipinos,
trained and commanded by American Army officers, either from the
regular Army or from the volunteers. The same thing had been done
with success by the British in India and the Straits Settlements, by
the Dutch in Java and by our own General Davis in Porto Rico, and
as the insurrectionary force had dwindled to a few bands and to
scattered groups of murderers and ladrones, so acknowledged by
everybody, there was no reason why a native constabulary should not
be employed to clear these out.
This plan was among the first things submitted to General Chaffee,
but he was evidently not impressed. “Pin them down with a bayonet
for at least ten years” was a favourite expression of Army sentiment
which sometimes made the Commissioners’ explanations to the
natives rather difficult.
General Wright, on behalf of the Commission, called on General
Chaffee and was much surprised to learn that he had not even read
the Constabulary bill which had been passed some time before and
held up pending the hoped for opportunity to carry it into effect.
When General Wright explained the purport of the measure General
Chaffee said,
“I am opposed to the whole business. It seems to me that you are
trying to introduce something to take the place of my Army.”
“Why, so we are,” said General Wright. “We are trying to create a
civil police force to do the police work which we understood the
Army was anxious to be relieved of. You have announced your
purpose to concentrate the Army in the interest of economy, and to
let our civil governments stand alone to see what is in them and we
consider it necessary to have a constabulary, or some such force, to
take care of the lawless characters that are sure to be in the country
after four years of war, and especially in a country where the natives
take naturally to ladronism. The Municipal police as now organised
are not able to meet all the requirements in this regard.”
“There you are,” said General Chaffee, “you give your whole case
away.”
“I have no case to give away,” replied General Wright. “We are
trying to put our provincial governments on a basis where they will
require nothing but the moral force of the military arm, and actually
to preserve law and order through the civil arm. The people desire
peace, but they also desire protection and we intend through the civil
government to give it to them.”
The Commissioner then suggested the names of some Army
officers whose peculiar tact in handling Filipinos had marked them
as the best available men for organising and training native soldiers,
but General Chaffee was not inclined to detail them for the work, so
General Wright returned to the Commission quite cast down and
communicated to his colleagues the feeling that they were to have a
continuance of the same difficulties with which they were required to
contend under the former administration.
But a peacemaker came along in the person of General Corbin. He
spent some time with General Chaffee and then came to Malacañan
to visit us. He made a hurried, but quite extensive trip through the
Islands and gave the whole situation pretty thorough inspection.
After he left, a change was found to have come over the spirit of
affairs, and it was thought that he had managed to make clear to
everybody concerned that, while there was a military arm and a civil
arm of the government in the Philippines, they represented a single
American purpose and that that purpose had been expressed by the
administration at Washington when the Commission was sent out to
do the work it was then engaged upon.
After that General Chaffee seems not only to have been amenable
to reason, but to have been imbued with a spirit of cordiality and
helpfulness which was most gratifying to the long-harassed
Commission. To facilitate co-operation, a private telephone was
installed between the offices of Mr. Taft and the Commanding
General, and it seemed to me that my husband suddenly lost some of
the lines of worry which had begun to appear in his face.
 The Constabulary, as everybody knows, was eventually established
and perhaps no finer body of men, organised for such a purpose,
exists. It took a long time to get them enlisted, equipped and
properly drilled, but to-day they are a force which every man and
woman in the Philippines, of whatever nationality, colour, creed or
occupation, regards with peculiar satisfaction. They include corps
enlisted from nearly every tribe in the Islands, not excepting the
Moros and the Igorrotes. The Moro constabulario is distinguishable
from the Christian in that he wears a jaunty red fez with his smart
khaki uniform instead of the regulation cap, while the Igorrote
refuses trousers and contents himself with the cap, the tight jacket,
the cartridge belt and a bright “G-string.” To the Ifugao Igorrote
uniform is added a distinguishing spiral of brass which the natty
soldier wears just below the knee. It is difficult to imagine anything
more extraordinary than a “crack” company of these magnificent
barelegged Ifugaos going through dress-parade drill under the sharp
commands of an American officer. The Constabulary Band of eighty-
odd pieces, under the direction of Captain Loving, an American
negro from the Boston Conservatory of Music, is well known in
America and is generally considered one of the really great bands of
the world. All its members are Filipinos.
Press clippings and some correspondence which I have before me
remind me that even at this period there began to manifest itself in
the Taft family, and otherwheres, a mild interest in the possibility
that my husband might become President of the United States. Mr.
Taft himself treated all such “far-fetched speculation” with the
derision which he thought it deserved, but to me it did not seem at all
unreasonable. We received first a copy of the Boston Herald
containing two marked articles in parallel columns, one of which,
headed by a picture of Mr. Taft, stated that in Washington there had
been serious suggestion of his name as a Presidential candidate and
the other giving a sympathetic account of an anti-imperialistic
meeting at Faneuil Hall. We thought the two articles as “news items”
hardly warranted juxtaposition, and it seemed to us the editor was
indulging a sort of sardonic sense of humour when he placed them
so. Not that my husband was an “imperialist,” but that he was
generally so considered. Indeed, he was the most active anti-
imperialist of them all. He was doing the work of carrying out a
thoroughly anti-imperialistic policy, but he recognised the difference
between abandoning the Philippines to a certain unhappy fate and
guiding them to substantial independence founded on self-
dependence. It took a long time to get the shouters from the
housetops to accept this interpretation of our national obligation, but
there was reassurance in the fact that where our honour is involved
Americanism can always be trusted to rise above purely partisan
politics.
Mr. Taft’s mother, who took an active and very intelligent interest
in her son’s work and who sent him letters by nearly every mail
which were filled with entertaining and accurate comment on
Philippine affairs, took the suggestion of his being a Presidential
possibility quite seriously. And she did not at all approve of it.
Having seen a number of press notices about it she sat down and
wrote him a long letter in which she discussed with measured
arguments the wisdom of his keeping out of politics. At that time the
idea appealed to nothing in him except his sense of humour. He
wrote to his brother Charles: “To me such a discussion has for its
chief feature the element of humour. The idea that a man who has
issued injunctions against labour unions, almost by the bushel, who
has sent at least ten or a dozen violent labour agitators to jail, and
who is known as one of the worst judges for the maintenance of
government by injunction, could ever be a successful candidate on a
Presidential ticket, strikes me as intensely ludicrous; and had I the
slightest ambition in that direction I hope that my good sense would
bid me to suppress it. But, more than this, the horrors of a modern
Presidential campaign and the political troubles of the successful
candidate for President, rob the office of the slightest attraction for
me. I have but one ambition, and if that cannot be satisfied I am
content to return to the practice of the law with reasonable assurance
that if my health holds out I can make a living, and make Nellie and
the children more comfortable than I could if I went to Washington.”
This letter is dated August 27, 1901, and was written on a Spanish
steamer which the Commission had taken from Aparri, on the north
coast of Luzon, after they finished the last of the long trips they had
to make for the purpose of organising civil government in the
provinces.
It was just after they returned from this trip; just when things were
at their brightest; when everything seemed to be developing so
rapidly and our hopes were running high, that we were shaken by the
appalling news of the attack on President McKinley. We had kept
luncheon waiting for Mr. Taft until it seemed useless to wait any
longer and we were at table when he came in. He looked so white and
stunned and helpless that I was frightened before he could speak.
Then he said, “The President has been shot.”
I suppose that throughout the United States the emotions of
horror and grief were beyond expression, but I cannot help thinking
that to the Americans in the Philippines the shock came with more
overwhelming force than to any one else. Mr. McKinley was our chief
in a very special sense. He was the director of our endeavours and
the father of our destinies. It was he who had sent the civil officials
out there and it was on the strength of his never failing support that
we had relied in all our troubles. It might, indeed, have been Mr.
Root in whose mind the great schemes for the development of the
islands and their peoples had been conceived, but Mr. Root exercised
his authority through the wise endorsement of the President and it
was to the President that we looked for sanction or criticism of every
move that was made. Then, too, the extraordinary sweetness of his
nature inspired in every one with whom he came in close contact a
strong personal affection, and we had reason to feel this more than
most people. Truly, it was as if the foundations of our world had
crumbled under us.
But he was not dead; and on the fact that he was strong and clean
we began to build hopes. Yet the hush which fell upon the
community on the day that he was shot was not broken until a couple
of days before he died when we received word that he was
recovering. We were so far away that we could not believe anybody
would send us such a cable unless it were founded on a practical
certainty, and our “Thank God!” was sufficiently fervent to dispel all
the gloom that had enveloped us. Then came the cable announcing
his death. I need not dwell on that.
Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt knew each other very well. They had
been in Washington together years before, Mr. Taft as Solicitor
General, Mr. Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner, and they had
corresponded with some frequency since we had been in Manila. So,
in so far as the work in the Philippines was concerned, my husband
knew where the new President’s sympathies were and he had no
fears on that score. At the same time he was most anxious to have
Mr. Root continued as Secretary of War in order that there might not
be any delay or radical change in carrying out the plans which had
been adopted and put in operation under his direction. All activities
suffered a sort of paralysis from the crushing blow of the President’s
assassination, but the press of routine work continued. We were very
much interested in learning that a great many Filipinos, clever
politicians as they are, thought that after Mr. McKinley’s death Mr.
Bryan would become President, and that, after all, they would get
immediate independence.
Then came the awful tragedy of Balangiga. It happened only a few
days after the President died, while our nerves were still taut, and
filled us all with unspeakable horror intensified by the first actual
fear we had felt since we had been in the Philippine Islands.
Company “C” of the 9th Infantry, stationed at the town of Balangiga
on the island of Samar, was surprised at breakfast, without arms and
at a considerable distance from their quarters, and fifty of them were
massacred. About thirty fought their way bare handed through the
mob, each man of which had a bolo or a gun, and lived to tell the tale.
It was a disaster so ghastly in its details, so undreamed of under the
conditions of almost universal peace which had been established,
that it created absolute panic. Men began to go about their everyday
occupations in Manila carrying pistols conspicuously displayed, and
half the people one met could talk of nothing else but their
conviction that the whole archipelago was a smouldering volcano
and that we were all liable to be murdered in our beds any night. Of
course this made the Army officers more certain than ever that the
Islands should have remained under military control indefinitely,
and I cannot deny that, at the time, their arguments seemed to have
some foundation. It was a frightful nervous strain and it took several
months of tranquillity to restore confidence. If it had been a regular
engagement in which the Americans had sustained a reverse it could
have been accepted with some philosophy, but it was a plain
massacre of a company of defenceless men by many times their
number who had gotten into the town with the consent of the
American authorities, and in conspiracy with the local headman and
the native parish priest, on the pretext of bringing in for surrender a
band of insurrectos.
 The man, Lucban, who was in command of the Samar ladrones
who committed this atrocity, is now a prominent politico in Manila,
and it is interesting to know that only last year, in a campaign
speech, he referred with dramatic intensity to “our glorious victory of
Balangiga.” He was appealing to an ignorant electorate, many of
whom, as he knew, wore the scar of the awful Katipunan “blood
pact,” but it is just to record that the average Filipino is not proud of
the Balangiga “victory.”
Shortly before these unhappy events my sister Maria was called
back to America by the illness of our mother, and I was left to face
the tragic excitements of the month of September without her
comforting companionship. By October I began to feel that I would
have to get out of the Philippine Islands or suffer a nervous
breakdown, so my husband and I agreed that it would be well for me
to “run up to China,” as they express it out there. Running up to
China at that time of year meant getting out of tropic heat into
bracing autumn weather with a nip of real winter in it, and there was
nothing that I needed more.
Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Moses were both anxious to see something
of China before leaving the Orient, and as this seemed an excellent
opportunity to make the trip, they decided to go with me. The Boxer
Insurrection had just been suppressed and the Dowager Empress
had not yet returned from the West, whither she had fled during the
siege of Peking. We were used to the alarums of war and we thought
we were likely to see more of China “from the inside” than if we
visited the country during a period of complete calm. Then there
were wonderful tales of valuable “loot” which interested us. Not
necessarily illegitimate loot, but curios and art treasures in the hands
of Chinese themselves who were selling things at ridiculously low
figures and, sometimes, with a fascinating air of great mystery. There
is some allurement in the idea of bargaining for priceless porcelains,
ivories, silks and Russian sables behind closed and double-locked
doors, in the dark depths of some wretched Chinese hovel. Our Army
officers who had helped to relieve Peking brought us stories of this
kind of adventure, and I secretly hoped that we should be able to
have just some such experience. But being the wives of American
officials I thought likely we should be “taken care of” every hour of
every twenty-four. And so we were.
 We sailed to Shanghai and went from there straight to Peking,
where we became the guests of Colonel and Mrs. Robertson, who had
gone in with the American troops in the Allied Armies and were
quartered in no less a place than the Temple of Heaven. The casual
tourist looking now upon that glorious collection of ancestral shrines
would find it difficult to believe that they once served as barracks for
American soldiers. Most people who visit the Temple of Heaven find
in it an atmosphere of peace and serenity such as is achieved by few
structures in the world, and to have this deep calm invaded by
business-like “foreign-devil” troops must have ruffled the spirits of
the high gods. But the soldiers had to be quartered somewhere and
this great, clean, tree-sheltered enclosure in the heart of the Chinese
city offered ample space.
Mr. Conger was then our Minister to China, and after spending a
few very busy days sightseeing we went to the Legation to visit him.
The Legation quarter, which had been laid in ruins during the Boxer
troubles, had not yet begun to assume an aspect of orderliness, and
many were the evidences of the weeks of horror through which the
besieged foreign representatives had lived.
As the Empress Dowager and her court had not yet returned, we
hoped to be able to see all the mysteries of the Forbidden City, but
order had been restored to a point where it was possible to make the
palaces once more “forbidden,” so we were shown only enough to
whet our curiosity. But the wonderful walls and the temples, the
long, unbelievable streets and the curious life of the people were
sufficient to save us from any feeling of disappointment in our visit.
At a dinner given for us by our Minister we met a number of men and
women who had been through the siege, and I sat next to Sir Robert
Hart, of the Imperial Chinese Customs, the most interesting man,
perhaps, that the great occidental-oriental co-operation has ever
produced.
When we returned to Shanghai on our way down from Peking I
was greeted by two cablegrams. It just happened that I opened them
in the order of their coming and the first one contained the
information that my husband was very ill and said that I had better
return at once to Manila, while the second read that he was much
better and that there was no cause for alarm. There was no way of
getting to Manila for several days, because there were no boats going.
So I decided to take a trip up the Yangtse River on the house-boat
belonging to the wife of the American Consul. If I had been doing
this for pleasure instead of for the purpose of “getting away from
myself” I should have enjoyed it exceedingly, but as it was I have but
a vague recollection of a very wide and very muddy river; great
stretches of clay flats, broken here and there by little clumps of round
mounds which I knew were Chinese graves, and bordered by distant,
low hills; an occasional quaint grey town with uptilted tile roofs; and
a few graceful but dreary-looking pagodas crowning lonesome hill-
tops. And in addition to all of this there was a seething mass of very
dirty and very noisy humanity which kept out of our way and
regarded us with anything but friendly looks.
I had left my husband apparently perfectly well, but I subsequently
learned that the night after I left Manila he developed the first
symptoms of his illness. It was diagnosed at first as dengue fever, a
disease quite common in the Philippines which, though exceedingly
disagreeable, is not regarded as dangerous. It was about two weeks
before a correct diagnosis was made, and it was then discovered that
he was suffering from an abscess which called for a serious
emergency operation. He was taken to the First Reserve Army
hospital and the operation was performed by Dr. Rhoads, the Army
surgeon who afterward became his aide when he was President.
The children must have been much frightened. They had never
seen their father ill before, and he told me afterward that he should
never forget the way they looked as he was being carried out of
Malacañan on a stretcher borne by six stalwart American policemen.
They were all huddled together in the great hall as he passed
through, and while Bob and Charlie were gazing at the proceedings
in open-eyed astonishment, Helen was weeping.
For twenty-four hours after the operation the doctors were not at
all certain that their patient would live, nor did their anxiety end at
that time. The abscess was of long growth, the wound had to be made
a terrible one, and there was great danger of blood poisoning. Mr.
Taft rallied but a second operation was necessary. By the time I
reached Manila he was well on the way to recovery, though even then
there was no prospect of his being able to move for many weeks to
come.
 He used to lie on his cot in the hospital and recite to his visitors a
verse of Kipling’s which he thought fitted his case exactly:
“Now it is not well for the white man
To hurry the Aryan brown,
For the white man riles and the Aryan smiles,
And it weareth the white man down.
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: ‘A fool lies here
Who tried to hurry the East.’”

It was decided at once by everybody, including the doctors, Mr.

Root and President Roosevelt, that Mr. Taft must leave the Islands as
soon as he was able to travel, and there were several reasons, besides
those connected with health, why it seemed best for us to return to
the United States. The principal one was that Congress was
becoming very active with regard to Philippine matters, and as Mr.
Taft was anxious that the right kind of legislation should be passed,
he wished to go to Washington and present the facts about the
situation as he had found them during his long hand-to-hand
struggle with the problem. Mr. Root cabled him that his presence in
Washington was necessary and granted him a three months’ leave of
absence from his duties as Governor, while General Wright was
appointed vice-Governor to fill his place for the time being.
Mr. Worcester was the ranking member of the Commission, but
my husband felt that he had not quite the same talent for genially
dealing with every kind of person, whether evasive Filipino or
dictatorial Army officer, which General Wright so conspicuously
displayed, and, moreover, Mr. Worcester was entirely engrossed with
the problems of his department, which included health and
sanitation and the satisfactory adjustment of the difficulties
connected with the government of the non-Christian tribes. These
were matters which appealed to Mr. Worcester’s scientific mind and
which he vastly preferred to the uncongenial task of administering
the routine of government, so he was only too willing not to be
encumbered with the duties of Governor. This, I understand, was Mr.
Worcester’s attitude throughout his thirteen years as Secretary of the
Interior, during which time he was always the ranking Commissioner
with the first right, under a promotion system, to the Governorship
whenever a vacancy occurred in that office.
The transport Grant was assigned for our use by General Chaffee,
and we made our preparations for an extended absence.
One incident of my husband’s convalescence in the hospital I think
I must relate. In an adjoining room General Frederick Funston was
recovering from an operation for appendicitis and he was sufficiently
far advanced to be able to walk around, so he used to call on Mr. Taft
quite often. Now General Funston, for the benefit of those who have
no mental picture of him, is by no means gigantic. He has the bearing
of a seven-foot soldier, but the truth is he is not more than five feet
three or four inches in height.
One day there was an earthquake of long duration and extended
vibration which would have been sufficient to destroy Manila had it
not lacked a certain upward jerk calculated to unbalance swaying
walls. One gets used to earthquakes in the Orient in a way, but no
amount of familiarity can make the sensation a pleasant one. My
husband was alone at the time and he had decided to hold hard to his
bed and let the roof come down on him if it had to. The hospital was
a one story wooden building and he really thought he was as safe in it
as he would be anywhere. Moreover, he was quite unable to walk, so
his fortitude could hardly be called voluntary, but he had scarcely
had time to steel himself for the worst when his door was thrown
open and in rushed General Funston.
“We must carry out the Governor!” he shouted; “we must carry out
the Governor!”
“But how are you going to do that, General?” asked Mr. Taft.
He knew quite well that General Funston, in his weakened
condition, would be incapable of carrying an infant very far.
“Oh, I have my orderly with me,” responded the doughty General,
and by this time he had begun to get a firm grasp on the mattress
while behind him hurried a soldier, shorter even than his chief, but
with the same look of dauntless determination in his eye.
In spite of the straining on the rafters, Mr. Taft burst out laughing
and flatly refused to let them try to move him. Fortunately for them
all the upward jerk necessary to bring down the roof didn’t occur, so
there is no way of telling whether or not, for once in his life, General
Funston started something that he couldn’t finish.
We sailed from Manila on Christmas Eve, 1901, and, much as I had
enjoyed my life and experiences in our new world of the Philippines,
I was glad to see the tropic shores fade away and to feel that we were
to have a few months in our own land and climate, and among our
own old friends, before I sighted them again.
 CHAPTER XI
A TRIP TO ROME

The winter of 1902, the greater part of which we spent in

Cincinnati, is memorable only as a period of bereavement and
protracted illnesses. Perhaps such a record has no place in a
narrative wherein it is my wish to dwell on pleasant memories only,
or, at least, to touch as lightly as possible upon those incidents
which, for one’s peace, may better be forgotten, but a whole winter
filled with grief and worry is not so easily torn from the leaves of the
calendar rolled back.
In the first place, when I left Manila in December, 1901, I was very
near to a nervous breakdown. This was due to the long strain of a
peculiarly exacting official life in a trying climate, and an added
weight of uneasiness about my husband’s illness.
Then, too, my mother was very ill. She had suffered a stroke of
paralysis the year before from which she had never rallied and I was
extremely anxious to be with her in Cincinnati.
When we arrived in San Francisco a terrible mid-winter storm was
sweeping the country from one end to the other and we were strongly
advised to delay our trip across the continent, but we were both eager
to go on so we started East at once over the Union Pacific.
When we passed Ogden we found ourselves in the midst of the
worst blizzard I ever saw. The snow piled up ahead of us, delaying us
hour by hour; the bitter wind fairly shook the heavy train; and to
turn mere discomfort into misery the water pipes in the cars froze
solid and we were left without heat of any kind. There was nothing to
do but to go to bed; but even so, with all the blankets available piled
on top of us, we shivered through interminable hours while the train
creaked and puffed and struggled over the icy tracks.
 When we reached Omaha I received a telegram telling me that my
mother had died the day before, and I found it no longer possible to
brace myself against the inevitable collapse. We hurried on to
Cincinnati and arrived in time for my mother’s funeral, but I was too
ill to be present. It was two months before I began to recover.
In the meantime Mr. Taft left us and went on to Washington for
consultation with the President and Mr. Root and to appear before
the Philippine Committees of the House and Senate which were then
conducting minute inquiries into conditions in the Islands
preparatory to passing a much needed governmental bill. For a
whole month he was subjected to a hostile cross-examination, but he
was able to place before the Committees more first-hand and
accurate information on the subject of their deliberations than they
had theretofore received. This was exactly what he wanted to come to
the United States for, and he would greatly have enjoyed it had he
been in his usual form, but he was not. During his stay in
Washington he was the guest of Secretary and Mrs. Root and only
their friendly care and solicitude enabled him to continue so long. In
March he was compelled to return to Cincinnati for another
operation, the third in five months. Everything considered, it seemed
to me the Taft family had fallen upon evil days.
However, the weeks passed, I began to improve, and as soon as my
husband had fairly set his feet on earth again we began to make plans
for our return to the Philippines. There could be no thought of
abandoning the work in the Islands just when it was beginning to
assume an ordered and encouraging aspect, nor was it possible just
then to shift the responsibility to other shoulders. This would have
been too much like “changing horses in the middle of a stream.”
My husband was able while he was in Washington to present to
President Roosevelt and Secretary Root a very clear outline of
Philippine affairs, together with such details as could never be
conveyed by cable, and the inevitable conclusion reached was that no
solution of the problem was possible which did not include the
settlement of the Friar controversy. The four monastic orders, the
Franciscan, the Dominican, the Augustinian and the Recoleto, which
held four hundred thousand acres of the best agricultural land in the
Islands, had won the lasting enmity of the Filipino people and it was
absolutely impossible to establish permanent peace while the Friars
remained and persisted in an attempt to return to their parishes.
Hundreds of them were living in practical imprisonment in the
monasteries of Manila, and that they should not be allowed to return
to their churches throughout the Islands, from which they had been
driven, was the one stand taken by the Filipinos from which they
could not by any form of persuasion be moved.
The solution of the difficulty proposed by Mr. Taft and his
colleagues in the Philippine government was that the United States
purchase the Friars’ lands and turn them into a public domain on the
condition that the orders objected to by the people be withdrawn
from the Islands.
As soon as President Roosevelt recognised the importance of
accomplishing these things he decided, with characteristic
directness, that somebody should go at once to Rome and open
negotiations with the Vatican, and after considering various men for
this delicate mission he concluded that Mr. Taft was the man best
fitted to undertake it.
The prospect of another novel experience was exceedingly
gratifying to me and I began at once to look forward with interest to a
renewal of my acquaintance with Rome and to the trip back to the
East by the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean which,
according to Kipling, “sits an’ smiles, so sof’, so bright, so bloomin’
blue.” So my feet no longer lagged in my preparations for a long trip
with my three children and another extended residence in the
tropics.
To assist Mr. Taft in his negotiations with the Vatican, and to make
up a dignified and formidable looking Commission, the President
appointed Bishop O’Gorman of the Catholic diocese of South Dakota,
and General James F. Smith, at that time a member of the Philippine
judiciary and in later years Philippine Commissioner and Governor-
General of the Islands. His rank of General he attained as an officer
of volunteers in the Army of Pacification in the Philippines, but, a
lawyer in the beginning, after he was appointed to the Bench he
became known as Judge Smith, and Judge we always called him. He
is an Irish Catholic Democrat and a man of very sane views and
exceptional ability. Major John Biddle Porter was made Secretary-
Interpreter to the Commission, and Bishop Brent, Episcopal Bishop
of the Philippines, on his way to Manila, decided to go with Mr. Taft,